ReviewNature reviews. Neuroscience2020
Qualitative sex differences in pain processing: emerging evidence of a biased literature.
Review in Nature reviews. Neuroscience, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 378 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
378 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Sex-specific pain management and outcomes in pediatric elective posterior spinal fusion: a database review.Spine deformity · 2026Pooled it
- Esmolol as an Adjunct in Multimodal Anesthesia: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Its Opioid-Sparing and Analgesic Effects.Anesthesia and analgesia · 2026Pooled it
- Educational strategies for integrating gender perspectives in health professions training: a systematic review to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion.BMC medical education · 2026Pooled it
- Efficacy of 4% tetracaine gel and lidocaine-prilocaine cream in reducing local anesthetic injection pain in upper eyelid blepharoplasty: a randomized, single-blinded, controlled trial.BMC ophthalmology · 2024Trial
- Reference ranges and influencing factors of pressure pain threshold in Chinese patients with knee osteoarthritis.Annals of medicine · 2026Article
- Glial cells in neuropathic pain.Physiological reviews · 2026Review
- Sex-related analgesic responses to photobiomodulation therapy in rats with neuropathic pain.Lasers in medical science · 2026Article
- Chronic joint pain drives sex-specific changes in hippocampal glutamatergic signaling and sleep.npj biomedical innovations · 2026Article
- A Thematic Narrative Review of Osteoarthritis Risk Factors Across the Female Life Course.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- Chasing the Wrong Door for 30 Years: Is Suzetrigine the Key to Selective Pain Relief?Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2026Review
- Peritraumatic C-reactive protein levels predict pain outcomes following traumatic stress exposure in a sex-dependent manner.The journal of pain · 2026Article
- The Intraplantar CFA Inflammatory Pain Model Incompletely Captures Pain Comorbidities Across Sexes.Journal of neuroscience research · 2026Article
- Integrated Investigation of Sex Differences in the Human Nociceptin/Orphanin FQ Receptor System: Postmortem Analyses and In Vivo [Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2026Article
- Activation of mu-opioid receptors slows pacemaking in hypothalamic A11 dopamine neurons.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Phase-specific involvement of BDNF-TrkB signaling in HSV-1-induced herpetic pain and its transition to postherpetic neuralgia-like pain.Pharmacological reports : PR · 2026Article
- Article
- Experimenter-free pain assessment in mice using a thermal gradient ring and functional linear models.Pain reports · 2026Article
- Peri-adolescent ethanol exposure differentially affects mechanical and thermal sensitivity in rats.The journal of pain · 2026Article
- Association between preoperative central sensitization-related symptoms and poor postoperative pain improvement after total knee arthroplasty: an exploratory analysis.International orthopaedics · 2026Article
- Association Between Body Composition, Muscle-to-Weight Ratio, and Functional Disability in Patients with Chronic Non-Specific Low Back Pain: A Cross-Sectional Study.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2026Observational
318 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
Although most patients with chronic pain are women, the preclinical literature regarding pain processing and the pathophysiology of chronic pain has historically been derived overwhelmingly from the study of male rodents. This Review describes how the recent adoption by a number of funding agencies of policies mandating the incorporation of sex as a biological variable into preclinical research has correlated with an increase in the number of studies investigating sex differences in pain and analgesia. Trends in the field are analysed, with a focus on newly published findings of qualitative sex differences: that is, those findings that are suggestive of differential processing mechanisms in each sex. It is becoming increasingly clear that robust differences exist in the genetic, molecular, cellular and systems-level mechanisms of acute and chronic pain processing in male and female rodents and humans.
Indexed as
Identifiers
32440016What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.